Study for Craters (Overall Site Plan with Survey Net)

James Turrell’s art centers on the perception of light in architectural spaces. He employed aerial landscape views in works related to his most ambitious site project, an “observatory” within the Roden Crater in Arizona. Turrell chose the site during aerial flyovers in the late 1970s, and since then he has been constructing viewing spaces that admit the natural light of the sun and stars in various ways to create specific perceptual effects. A meeting of science and art, Turrell’s work draws on the power of place, geologic time, and humanity’s long relationship to celestial phenomena.